>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios on this kind of continuing leadership series that we've put together. Reaching out to the community for tips and tricks on kind of getting through what is, this kind of ongoing COVID crisis and situation as it continues to go weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm really excited to have one of my favorite members of our community, is Nick Mehta, the CEO of Gainsight. Had the real pleasure of interviewing him a couple times and had to get him on. So Nick, thanks for taking some time out of your very busy day to join us. >> Jeff, honored to be here, thank you. >> Pleasure, so let's just jump into it. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on, is that Gainsight has been a distributed company from the beginning, and so I think the COVID, suddenly everyone got this work from home order, there was no prep, there was no planning, it's like this light switch digital transformation moment. So love to hear from someone who's been doing it for awhile. What are some of the lessons? How should people think about running a distributed company? >> Yeah, it's really interesting, Jeff, 'cause we are just by happenstance, from the beginning, distributed where we have, our first two offices were St. Louis and Hyderabad, India. So two places you cannot get there through one flight. So, you have to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously and then over time, we have offices in the Bay Area. We have tons of people that work from home. And so we try to tell people we don't have a headquarters. The headquarters is wherever you are, wherever you live and wherever you want to work. And so we've always been super flexible about come in to the office if you want, don't come in, et cetera. So different than some companies in that respect. And because of that, pre-COVID, we always a very heavy video culture, lots of video conferencing. Even if some people were in an office, there's always somebody else dialing in. One benefit we got from that is you never had to miss your kids' stuff or your family things. I would go to my daughter's performance in the middle of the day and know I can just dial into a call on the way there. And so we always had that. But what's amazing is now we're all on a level playing field, there's nobody in our office. And I got to say, this is, in some ways, even better 'cause I feel like when you're the person dialed in, and a lot of people are in a room, you probably had that experience, and it feels like you're kind of not on the same playing field, right? Hard to hear the jokes or the comments and you might not feel like you're totally in crowd, so to speak, right? But now everyone's just at their computer, sitting there in a chair all day doing these Zooms and it does feel like it's equalizing a little bit. And what it's caused us to do is say, hey, what are ways we can all recreate that community from home? So as an example, every 7:45 a.m. every day, we have a Zoom call that's just pure joy and fun. Trivia, pets, kids. The employees' kids announce people's birthdays and the weather. And so these ways we've been able to integrate our home and our work that we never could before, it's really powerful. It's a tough situation overall, and we feel for all the people affected. But even in tough situations, there are silver linings, and we're finding 'em. >> Yeah, it's funny, we just had Darren Murph on the other day. I don't know if you know Darren. He is the head of Remote Work at GitLab, and he-- >> Oh, yeah. >> And he talked about kind of the social norms. And one of the instances that he brought up was, back in the day when you had some people in the office, some people joining via remote, that it is this kind of disharmony because they're very different situations. So one of his suggestions was have everybody join via their laptop, even if they're sitting at their desk, right? So, as you said, you get kind of this level playing field. And the other thing which dovetails off what you just said is he always wanted executives to have a forcing function to work from home for an extended period of time, so they got to understand what it's all about. And it's not only looking through a little laptop or this or that, but it's also the distractions of the kids and the dogs and whatever else is happening around the house. So it is wild how this forcing function has really driven it. And his kind of takeaway is, as we, like say, move from can we get it into cloud to cloud first? And does it work on mobile to mobile first? >> Now it's really-- >> Yeah. >> It's really remote first. And if you-- >> Remote first. >> A remote first attitude about it and kind of turn it on it's head, it's why shouldn't it be remote versus can it be remote? It really changes the conversation and the dynamic of the whole situation. >> I love that. And just, GitLab, by the way, has been a true inspiration 'cause they are the most remote, remote company. And they share so much, I love what you said. As just two examples of reacting to what you said, pre-COVID, we always wanted to keep a level playing field. So we actually moved our all-hands meetings to be instead of being broadcast from one room, and you're kind of seeing this small screen with all these people, we all just were at computers presenting. And so everyone's on a level playing field. So I thought what GitLab said is great. And then the other point, I think post-COVID we have learned is the kids and the dogs aren't distractions, they're part of our life. And so embracing those and saying, hey, I see that kid in the background, bring them onto the screen. Even during work meetings, even customer meetings, you know? And I'm seeing, I'm on a customer meeting and the customer's bringing their kids onto the screen and it's kind of breaking this artificial wall between who we are at home and who we are at work 'cause we're human beings all throughout. At Gainsight, we talk about a human first approach to business and we've never been more human as a world than we are right now. >> Love it, love it. So another, get your thoughts on, is this whole idea of measurement and productivity at home. And it's really, I have to say, disturbing to see some of the new product announcements that are coming out in terms of people basically snoopin' on people. Whether it's trackin' how many hours of Zoom calls they're on, or how often are they in the VPN, or having their camera flip on every so many minutes or something. We had Marten Mickos on, who's now the CEO of HackerOne. He was CEO at MySQL years ago before it went to Sun and he had the great line, he said, it's so easy to fake it at the office, but when you're at home and you're only output is your deliverable, it makes it a lot easier. So I wonder if you can share some of your thoughts in terms of kind of managing output, setting expectations, to get people to get their work done. And then, as you see some of these new tools for people that are just entering this thing, it's just not right (chuckles). >> Yeah, I agree with you and Marten. I'm a huge fan of Marten, as well, I totally agree with both of it. And I think there's an older approach to work, which is more like a factory. It's like you got to see how many widgets you're processing and you got to micromanage and you got to monitoring and inspecting. Look, I don't run a factory, so maybe there are places where that model makes sense. So I'm not going to speak for every leader, but I could say if you're in a world where your job is information, services, software, where the value is the people and their knowledge, managing them that way is a losing battle. I go back to, some folks probably know, this famous TED Talk by Dan Pink on basically what motivates people. And in these knowledge worker jobs, it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. So autonomy, we have the freedom to do what we want. Mastery, we feel like we're getting better at jobs. And purpose, which is I have a why behind what I do. And I think, take that time you spend on your micromanagement and your Zoom, analyzing the Zoom sessions, and spend it on inspiring your team, on the purpose. Spend it on enabling your team in terms of mastery. Spend it on taking away barriers so they have more autonomy. I think you'll get way more out of your team. >> Yeah, I agree. I think it's, as Darren said, again, he's like, well, would you trust your people if you're on the fourth floor and they're on the sixth? So just-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> If you don't trust your people, you got to bigger issue than worrying about how many hours they're on Zoom, which is not the most productive use of time. >> People waste so much time in the office, and getting to the office. And by the way, I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's fine too. But it's not like the office is just unfettered productivity all the time, that's a total myth. >> Yes, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about events. So, obviously, the CUBE's in the event business. We've had to flip completely 'cause all the events are, well, they're all going digital for sure, and/or postponing it or canceling. So we've had to flip and do all dial-ins and there's a whole lot of stuff about asynchronous. But for you, I think it's interesting because as a distributed company, you had Gainsight Pulse as that moment to bring people together physically. You're in the same boat as everybody else, physical is not an option this year. So how are you approaching Gainsight Pulse, both because it's a switch from what you've done in the past, but you at least had the benefit of being in a distributed world? So you probably have a lot of advantages over people that have never done this before. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting, insightful observation. So just for a context, Pulse is an event we do every year to bring together the customer success community. 'Cause, as you observed, there is value in coming together. And so this is not just for our employees, this is for all the customer success people, and actually increasingly product management people out there, coming together around this common goal of driving success for your customers. And it started in 2013 with 300 people, and last year, we had 5,000 people at our event in San Francisco. We had similar events in London and Sydney. And so it's a big deal. And there's a lot of value to coming together physically. But obviously, that's not possible now, nor is it advisable. And we said, okay, how do we convert this and not lose what's special about Pulse? And leverage, like you said, Jeff, the fact that we're good at distributed stuff in general. And so we created what we call Pulse Everywhere. We didn't want to call it Pulse Virtual or something like that, Pulse Webinar, because we didn't want to set the bar as just like, oh, my virtual event, my webinar. This is something different. And we called it Everywhere, 'cause it's Pulse wherever you are. And we joke, it's in your house, it's in your backyard, it's on the peloton, it's walking the dog. You could be wherever you are and join Pulse this year, May 13th and 14th. And what's amazing is last year we had 5,000 people in person, this year we already have 13,000 people registered as of the end of April. And so we'll probably have more than three times the number of people at Pulse Everywhere. And we're really bringing that physical event concept into the virtual, literally with, instead of a puppy pit, where you're in a physical event, you'll bring puppies often, we have a puppy cam where you can see the puppies. We're not giving up on all of our silly music videos and jokes and we actually ship cameras and high-end equipment to all the speakers' houses. So they're going to have a very nice digital experience, our attendees are. It's not going to be like watching a video conference call. It's going to be like watching a TV show, one much like what you try to do here, right? And so we have this amazing experience for all of our presenters and then for the audience. And we're really trying to say how do we make it so it feels like you're in this really connected community? You just happen to not be able to shake people's hands. So it's coming up in a few weeks. It's a big experiment, but we're excited about it. >> There's so many conversations, and we jumped in right away, when this was all going down, what defines a digital event? And like you, I don't like the word virtual. There's nothing fake or virtual. To me, virtual's second to life. And kind of-- >> Yeah. >> Video game world. And like you, we did, it can't be a webinar, right? And so, if you really kind of get into the attributes of what is a webinar? It's generally a one-way communication for a significant portion of the allocated time and you kind of get your questions in and hopefully they take 'em, right? It's not a truly kind of engaged process. That said, as you said, to have the opportunity to separate creation, distribution and consumption of the content, now opens up all types of opportunity. And that's before you get into the benefits of the democratization, as you said, we're seeing that with a lot of the clients we work with. Their registration numbers are giant. >> Totally. >> Because-- >> You're not traveling to spend money, yeah. >> It'll be curious to see what the conversion is and I don't know we have a lot of data there. But, such a democratizing opportunity. And then, you have people that are trying to force, as Ben Nelson said on, you know Ben from Minerva, right? A car is not a mechanical horse, they're trying to force this new thing into this old paradigm and have people sit for, I saw one today, 24 hours, in front of their laptop. It's like a challenge. And it's like, no, no, no. Have your rally moment, have your fun stuff, have your kind of your one-to-many, but really there's so much opportunity for many-to-many. >> Many-to-many. >> Make all the content out there, yeah. >> We've created this concept in this Pulse Everywhere event called Tribes. And the idea is that when you go to an event, the goal is actually partially content, but a lot of times it's connection. And so in any given big event, there's lots of little communities out there and you want to meet people "like you". Might be people in a similar phase of their career, a similar type of company, in our case, it could be companies in certain industry. And so these Tribes in our kind of Pulse Everywhere experience, let people break out into their own tribes, and then kind of basically chat with each other throughout the event. And so it's not the exact same thing as having a drink with people, but at least a little bit more of that serendipitous conversation. >> Right, no, it's different and I think that's really the message, right? It's different, it's not the same. But there's a lot of stuff you can do that you can't do in the physical way, so quit focusing on what you can't do and embrace what you can. So that's great. And good luck on the event. Again, give the plug for it. >> Yeah, it's May 13th and 14th. If you go to gainsightpulse.com you can sign up, and it's basically anything related to driving better success for your customers, better retention, less churn, and better product experience. It's a great event to learn. >> Awesome, so I want to shift gears one more time and really talk about leadership. That's really kind of the focus of this series that we've been doing. And tough times call for great leadership. And it's really an opportunity for great leaders to show their stuff and let the rest of us learn. You have a really fantastic style. You know I'm a huge fan, we're social media buddies. But you're very personable and you're very, kind of human, I guess, is really the best word, in your communications. You've got ton of frequency, ton of variety. But really, most of it has kind of this human thread. I wonder if you can share kind of your philosophy behind social, 'cause I think a lot of leaders are afraid of it. I think they're afraid that there is reward for saying something stupid is not worth the benefit of saying okay things. And I think also a lot of leaders are afraid of showing some frailty, showing some emotion. Maybe you're a little bit scared, maybe we don't have all the answers. And yet you've really, you're not afraid at all. And I think it's really shines in the leadership activities and behaviors and things you do day in and day out. So how do you think about it? What's your strategy? >> Yeah, it's really interesting you ask, Jeff, because I'm in a group of CEOs that get together on a regular basis, and I'm going to be leading a session on social media for CEOs. And honestly, when I was putting it together, I was like, it's 2020, does that still need to exist? But somehow, there is this barrier. And I'll talk more about it, but I think the barrier isn't just about social media, it's just about how a CEO wants to present herself or himself into the world. And I think, to me, the three things to ask yourself are, first of all, why? Why do you want to be on social media? Why do you want to communicate to the outside? You should have a why. Hopefully you enjoy it, but also you're connecting from a business perspective with your customers. And for us, it's been a huge benefit to really be able to connect with our customers. And then, who are you targeting? So, I actually think an important thing to think about is it's okay to have a micro-audience. I don't have millions of Twitter followers like Lady Gaga, but within the world of SaaS and customer success and retention, I probably have a decent number. And that means I can really connect with my own specific audience. And then, what. So, the what is really interesting 'cause I think there's a lot of non-obvious things about, it's not just about your business. So I can tweet about customer success or retention and I do, but also the, what, about you as an individual, what's happening in your family? What's happening in the broader industry, in my case of SaaS? What's happening in the world of leading through COVID-19? All the questions you've asked, Jeff, are in this lens. And then that gets you to the final which is the, how. And I think the, how, is the most important. It's basically whether you can embrace the idea of being vulnerable. There's a famous TED Talk by Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability is the greatest superpower for leaders. I think the reason a lot of people have a hard time on social media, is they have a hard time really being vulnerable. And just saying, look, I'm just a human being just like all of you. I'm a privileged human being. I have a lot of things that luckily kind of came my way, but I'm just a human being. I get scared, I get anxious, I get lonely, all those things. Just like all of you, you know. And really being able to take off your armor of, oh, I'm a CEO. And then when you do that, you are more human. And it's like, this goes back to this concept of human first business. There's no work persona and home persona, there's just you. And I think it's surprising when you start doing it, and I started maybe seven, eight, nine years ago, it's like, wow, the world wants more human leaders. They want you to just be yourself, to talk about your challenges. I had the kids, when we got to 13,000 registrations for Pulse Everywhere, they pied me in the face. And the world wants to see CEOs being pied in the face. Probably that one, for sure, that's a guaranteed crowd pleaser. CEOs being pied in the face. But they want to see what you're into outside of work and the pop culture you're into. And they want to see the silly things that you're doing. They want you to be human. And so I think if you're willing to be vulnerable, which takes some bravery, it can really, really pay off for your business, but I think also for you as a person. >> Yeah, yeah. I think it's so insightful. And I think people are afraid of it for the wrong reasons, 'cause it is actually going to help people, it's going to help your own employees, as well, get to know you better. >> Totally, they love it. >> And you touched on another concept that I think is so important that I think a lot of people miss as we go from kind of the old broadcast world to more narrow casting, which is touching your audience and developing your relationship with your audience. So we have a concept here at theCUBE that one is greater than 1% of 100. Why go with the old broadcast model and just spray and you hope you have these really ridiculously low conversion rates to get to that person that you're trying to get to, versus just identifying that person and reaching out directly to those people, and having a direct engagement and a relative conversation within the people that care. And it's not everybody, but, as you said, within the population that cares about it it's meaningful and they get some value out of it. So it's a really kind of different strategy. So-- >> I love that. >> You're always get a lot of stuff out, but you are super prolific. So you got a bunch of projects that are just hitting today. So as we're getting ready to sit down, I see you just have a book came out. So tell us a little bit about the book that just came out. >> Sure, yeah, it's funny. I need to get my physical copy too at my home. I've got so a few, just for context. Five years ago, we released this first book on "Customer Success" which you can kind of see here. It's surprising really, really popular in this world of SaaS and customer success and it ties, Jeff, to what you just said which is, you don't need to be the book that everyone in the world reads, you need to be the book that everyone in your world reads. And so this book turned out to be that. Thousands of company management teams and CEOs in software and SaaS read it. And so, originally when this came out, it was just kind of an introduction to what we call customer success. Basically, how do you retain your customers for the long-term? How do you get them more value? And how do you get them to use more of what they've bought and eventually spend more money with you? And that's a mega-trend that's happening. We decided that we needed an update. So this second book is called "Customer Success Economy." It just came out, literally today. And it's available on Amazon. And it's about the idea that customer success started in tech companies, but it's now gone into many, many industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, services. And it started with a specific team called the customer success management team. But now it's affecting how companies build products, how they sell, how they market. So it's sort of this book is kind of a handbook for management teams on how to apply customer success to your whole business and we call it "Customer Success Economy" 'cause we do think the future of the economy isn't about marketing and selling transactional products, but it's about making sure what your customers are buying is actually delivering value for them, right? That's better for the world, but it's also just necessary 'cause your customers have the power now. You and I have the power to decide how to transport ourselves, whether it's buying a car or rideshare, in the old world when we could leave our house. And we have the power to decide how we're going to stay in a city, whether it's a hotel or Airbnb or whatever. And so customers have the power now, and if you're not driving success, you're not going to be able to keep those customers. And so "Customer Success Economy" is all about that. >> Yeah, and for people that aren't familiar with Gainsight, obviously, there's lots of resources that they can go. They should go to the show in a couple weeks, but also, I think, the interview that we did at PagerDuty, I think you really laid out kind of a great definition of what customer success is. And it's not CRM, it has nothing to do with CRM. CRM is tracking leads and tracking ops. It's not customer success. So, people can also check that. But I want to shift gears again a little bit because one, you also have your blog, MehtaPhysical, that came out. And you just came out again recently with a new post. I don't know when you, you must have a army of helper writers, but you talk about something that is really top of mind right now. And everyone that we get on theCUBE, especially big companies that have the benefit of a balance sheet with a few bucks in it, say we want to help our customers, we want to help our people be safe, obviously, that's first. But we also want to help our customers. But nobody ever really says what exactly does that mean? And it's pretty interesting. You lay out a bunch of things that are happening in the SaaS world, but I jumped on, I think it's number 10 of your list, which is how to think about helping your customers. And you give some real specific kind of guidance and guidelines and definitions, if you will, of how do you help our customers through these tough times. >> Yeah, so I'll summarize for the folks listening. One of the things we observed is, in this terrible tough times right now, your customers are in very different situations. And for simplicity, we thought about three categories. So the companies that we call category one, which are unfortunately, adversely affected by this terrible crisis, but also by the shutdown itself, and that's hotels, restaurants, airlines, and you can put other folks in that example. What do those customers need? Well, they probably need some financial relief. And you have to figure out what you're going to do there and that's a hard decision. And they also just need empathy. It's not easy and the stress level they have is massive. Then you've got, on the other extremes, a small number of your customers might be doing great despite this crisis or maybe even because of it, because they make video conferencing technology or remote work technology, or they make stuff for virtual or telemedicine. And those folks actually are likely to be super busy because they're just trying to keep up with the demand. So what they need from you is time and help. And then you got the people in between. Most companies, right, where there may be a mix of some things going well, some don't. And so what we recommended is think about your strategy, not just inside out, what you want, but outside in, what those clients need. And so as an example, you might think about in that first category, financial relief. The second category, the companies in the middle, they may need, they may not be willing to spend more money, but they may want to do more stuff. So maybe you unlock your product, make it available, so they can use everything in your suite for a while. And maybe in that third category, they're wiling to spend money, but they're just really busy. So maybe you offer services for them or things to help them as they scale. >> Yeah, so before I let you go, I just want to get your reaction to one more great leader. And as you can tell, I love great leaders and studying great leaders. Back when I was in business school we had Dave Pottruck, who at that time was the CEO of Schwab, come and speak and he's a phenomenal speaker and if you ever get a chance to see him speak. And at that point in time, Schwab had to reinvent their business with online trading and basically kill their call-in brokerage for online brokerage, and I think that they had a fixed price of 19.99, whatever it was. This was back in the late 90s. But he was a phenomenal speaker. And we finished and he had a small dinner with a group of people, and we just said, David, you are a phenomenal speaker, why, how, why're you so good? And he goes, you know, it's really pretty simple. As a CEO, I have one job. It's to communicate. And I have three constituencies. I kind of have the street and the market, I have my internal people, and then I have my customers and my ecosystem. And so he said, I, and he's a wrestler, he said, you know I treated it like wrestling. I hired a coach, I practiced my moves, I did it over and over, and I embraced it as a skill and it just showed so brightly. And it's such a contrast to people that get wrapped around the axle with their ego, or whatever. And I think you're such a shiny example of someone who over communicates, arguably, in terms of getting the message out, getting people on board, and letting people know what you're all about, what the priorities are, and where you're going. And it's such a sheer, or such a bright contrast to the people that don't do that that I think is so refreshing. And you do it in a fun and novel and in your own personal way. >> That's awesome to hear that story. He's a inspirational leader, and I've studied him, for sure. But I hadn't heard this specific story, and I totally agree with you. Communication is not something you're born with. Honestly, you might know this, Jeff, or not, as a kid, I was super lonely. I didn't really have any friends and I was one of those kids who just didn't fit in. So I was not the one they would pick to be on stage in front of thousands of people or anything else. But you just do it over and over again and you try to get better and you find, I think a big thing is finding your own voice, your own style. I'm not a super formal style, I try to be very human and authentic. And so finding your style that works for you, I agree, it's completely learnable. >> Yeah, well, Nick, thank you. Thanks for taking a few minutes. I'm sure you're super, super busy getting ready for the show in a couple weeks. But it's always great to catch up and really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and insights with us. >> Thank you, Jeff, it's an honor. >> All right, he's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (soft music)

>>Live from Copenhagen, Denmark. It's the cube covering new Tanex. Dot. Next 2019 brought to you by Nutanix. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Nutanix dot. Next we are here in Copenhagen. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting alongside Stu Miniman. We are joined by Dhiraj Penn day. He is the CEO and founder of Nutanix. Thank you so much for returning to our program. You are a Cuba. Thank you. So I want to talk to you about what we're here to do is celebrate 10 years of Nutanix. Ben Gibson, when he was up there on the main stage, he's the head of marketing. He was talking about watching you backstage, saying that I saw in him a lot of pride and emotion because this is really your baby. You started 10 years ago. There's been a lot of nostalgia, uh, bringing up some of your first employees. There's even a picture of you poised with a ping pong ball ready to play a little beer pong back in the early days. So talk a little bit about what this means to you to be here 10 years after you founded this couple. >>Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to come here. Um, err, it looks like an era, 10 years as an error. We've built a family of customers and employees and partners and uh, yet it feels like a, we haven't achieved a thing. So, you know, to me the more I make it look like it's 2010 back again, you can go back to being like a startup again and you know, growing from here because you know, growth is a very relative term. You know, it's a, it's a mindset thing and um, I think the new day and age of multicloud and what we have to do to virtualize all these different silos that have been merged and to virtualize, simplify and integrate, you know, virtualize, simplify, integrate clouds is going to be a journey of a lifetime actually. >>Yeah. Deer Ridge. I think back to some of our earliest discussions, uh, you know, you would bring us in and talking about, you know, the, the, the challenge of our era is building software for the distributed architecture that we need. And that was as relevant in 2010 or 2012 as it is here in 2019. Um, HCI helps simplify that deployment of virtualization. We are definitely a point that we need to simplify. Cloud. Cloud is here, it's growing. The hybrid pieces are there. So maybe prednisone side, you know, kind of what's the same about the journey and some of it is, you know, making one click upgrades in today's environment is way more complex, uh, than, than it would have been back when it was just a, you know, an appliance. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think talking >>about the whole concept of hyperconvergence initially started out as converging compute with storage. How do you keep them close together? Because, uh, machines need a locality, you know, applications need a local data because the network is the real enemy. And uh, the same was true of human performance. You know, like lots of teams, lots bureaucracy, very little autonomy. So when you brought data close to applications, application, people became autonomous, you know, they could do things on their own and that was the power of hyperconvergence. You know, you're able to provide performance to data and machines and you're able to provide performance to people because they became autonomous. I think that is not changing even in the hyperscaler data center environment and anything, the fact that you have to hop multiple switches to get to data. Uh, I think it's recreating the same problems that we started out this company with, you know, almost 10 years ago. >>In fact, if anything, the hyperscaler networks are worse than the networks that private clouds actually had or even on prem data centers had. So keeping data close to applications is, is relevant and it's fashionable one more time. And the fact that you can provide that autonomy to application folks to go launch their apps in the public cloud through this new architecture, using the bare metal service offerings to the public cloud where the bare metal offerings look like HP server or Dell server to us, I think recreates the same. So I think I'm a big proponent of the saying that says the more things change, the more they remain the same. And they actually look very much the same as 10 years ago. >>So how do you think that you describing the technolog technology, technological changes that have taken place, but really we're sort of back to where we started from, but how would you describe the ways, the differences in the ways that people work together, talking about the human beings who are actually using this technology? >>Well, uh, for one, uh, this notion of uh, converging teams and people is similar to the notion of converging, uh, machines, you know, hardware to pure software. I think, you know, what ever happened in our personal lives with the iPhone and the Android, uh, O S it's exactly what hyperconvergence data is. You know, we had all these gadgets and they were special special purpose, single purpose gadgets and we made them as apps and they were all together in this one, uh, sort of device. And then the device connected to cloud services. I think that's what happened in the enterprise computing as well. You know, compute, storage, networking, security, everything coming together as pure software is running the apps. And I think that has created the notion of generalists in it as well. Because as it matures, you can't have so many specialists. And just like in healthcare, you know, you can't have so many uh, specialist doctors when you need like a ton of primary care physicians and generalist practitioners and that's what it is going through as well. >>And so that's changing the skills that are in demand too from employers because you are looking for people who are sort of a mile wide and inch deep. >>Yeah. And in fact a, the inch deep is actually not a pejorative. I would say that it's a good thing because with automation and a lot of layering of software, you don't need to get deeper into the details. The weeds, especially if infrastructure computing goes, you know, what's our, is to really elevate it to go figure out things that really matter to the business, you know, which is applications and services as opposed to going and stitching together stuff that really can be done with pure software and a standardization. I know the level of standardization that operating models can bring with a commodity servers and fewer software select people go and do things that really are more relevant in this age actually. Yup. >>I was wondering if he did the close of the keynote, there was discussion of the tech preview of XY clusters. You and I've spoken a little bit off camera, uh, about this, but there is a lot of interest out there. You know, everything when you know, uh, Azure first announced Azure stack, it got everyone excited. Uh, to be honest, Rebecca and I were at the Microsoft, uh, one of the Microsoft shows last year and most of the attendees, we're really talking about it. So it's that kind of the buzz versus the reality of what customers are actually using. Where do you see, where are we with kind of that, that hybrid discussion and you know, why is Nutanix taking a slightly different approach, uh, than, than some of the others out there? >>Yeah, I mean, you know, this a hybrid cloud is another word for hyperconverged clouds and whatever HCI was in 2010 is what hybrid is today. So imagine 10 years from 2010 we're still talking about HCI, especially in the large enterprise as they won't barely begun to say look, private cloud equals at CA. I think that's been a sort of an epiphany moment for most of the CEOs of the global 2000 companies just in the last three years. You've been talking about it for 10 years now. So there's a bell curve of technology adoption. We are in the very early stages of what hyperconverged clouds will mean or what hybrid cloud should mean. I think doing it right is important because the market is large, you know, the ability to really move, uh, applications and infrastructure. I call them apps now, you know, the hypervisor is now in half because it can run in the Amazon platform, it can run in the Azure platform and that platform that they provided, billing identity, you know, recommendations and things of that nature. >>So on top of that, back from how do you go and in a put your app in the catalog, I think that's the overall, uh, sort of metaphor that I use. So in that sense, I don't look at the platform as a zero sum game for us. We just have to look at it as a platform where our apps can actually go and run. how does a company, you've grown quite a bit, but if you look at the overall market, you're still a small player compared to a Microsoft or Cisco or a Google out there. So we definitely think you have that opportunity to help simplify that, that cloud hyperconverged cloud experience as you said. Um, but uh, you know, how, how does the Nutanix, uh, get there? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, um, and I say this to people who followed virtualization, the history of virtualization. >>Uh, when VMware was building virtualization, silver market was $55 billion. Storage was 30 billion, networking was 25 billion and not $110 billion market. When they meant to $4 billion, they just had to think about what does it mean to put a layer of software on top of all this stuff so people can drag and drop experience from one server to another from one storage array to another and so on. So there's enough value to add on top of that 110 billion with your own 4 billion in 2012 there are $4 billion company. Actually not right now. We're thinking about, okay, these things are the new platform. Where is the value in going and virtualizing simplifying and integrating the mall with a layer of software that becomes the new integration software for all things multi cloud. Yeah. So it's interesting when I connect the dots with that to Nutanix is going to be going through its own transformation and you've talked publicly a lot about, you know, you sit on the board of Adobe that moved from software scripted is challenging. >>What I want to understand is what does that end result of these subscription model? What does that mean for your customers and how they can, you know, change that relationship. Okay. I talked about this in my keynote as well. The why of subscription. I think the very fact that we've decoupled the entitlement, uh, from hardware was the first change for us. You know, the fact that software can live anywhere. And on top of that, what subscription delivers is this notion of residual value where you can say, look, if I have unused products and unused, uh, terms on, on some of these products, can I use them for other things? Actually. So it provides a very agile procurement framework that is very new to the world of infrastructure actually. And yet we've had a ton of shelfware in infrastructure in general and a on-prem software in general, even in the public cloud that a lot of shelfware do. I think the ability to really go and repurpose stuff for new things that you want to buy provides a lot of optionality to our customers. You know, subscription also is about bite sizing thing so you don't have to buy big things, you know, and delivering it in real time. So I think, uh, you will see more and more of a consumption model change towards subscription in the coming years. >>It talking about the value of Nutanix in this multi-cloud world and you're, and you're talking about how customers really want that optionality. We're here in Copenhagen. How would you say the U S customers are different from the European customers in terms of what they're looking for or are they different? You >>know, uh, they're very similar because there's ton of global companies out there who have local offices and such in the global 2000 has tentacles everywhere. Uh, I think in some ways where they do differ is when it comes to the partner community and the channel and the system integrators, they're actually more influential here in Europe and Asia Pacific than in the U S because most of the talent in the U S goes and works for companies like us. And, uh, most of the talent in Europe, in Asia Pacific, they work for the channel and the system integrators. So how we actually work with them and learn from them and educate them on the, on the transformation I think is basically the only thing that's different. All right. Steerage, uh, w one of the feedback I got from customers is something that I hear at the Amazon show. I'm inundated with so much new stuff, you know, I can't keep up with it. >>Um, what might you explain a little bit kind of the portfolio and also if you can just organizationally how you think of this. You know, when we hear, you know, Amazon does their two pizza teams and they scale is very different from a traditional software infrastructure companies. So it's a great, uh, a point in, one of my favorite sort of things to think about these days is how do you not sell things that sell an experience. It's very, very important to differentiate the two because you know, you can build a ton of things. And then the question is if you've left the integration as an exercise to the reader or to the customer and you're basically telling them, look, you can as well buy best of breed from other companies in integrated on your own. So the job of integration and to really sell an experiences has to be left, shifted to companies like us. >>And that's what we've been doing with our products. You know, we are really bringing them together. When you say all together now it's also about our products actually it's the portfolio around data, making sure that we are really bringing them all together. They can leverage each other. One sits on top of the other one tiers to the other. They can share common policy policy engines and things like that. I mean what we're doing with security for example, is bringing multicloud with the old world of micro segmentation. Actually, you know, there's a lot of integration that's going on yet we want to provide each of these GMs autonomy because you know, at some level, uh, they are all looking for individual use cases and workflows and they're looking for mastery, which is like how do I master, uh, what I do well with my customers, but in the purpose has to be more than their own actually know. >>And like you think about autonomy, mastery, purpose, you know, one of Dan Pink's philosophies of motivation are general managers. They're motivated if you give them amp, you know, autonomy, mastery and purpose. But at the end of the day, the purpose is customer driven. It's not driven by products is driven by customers. It's during my customer's experience rather than the general managers, things they're actually building to the customers. Just one followup. When I think about, you know, one of the challenges I hear inside customers and I thought we'd made more progress is still a lot of silos. I talked to customers that are like, well, you know, I, I've deployed Nutanix and I love it, but there's this group over here and they're doing something different and they're certified or they're starting to use it, or Oh my God, this developer team spun something up and didn't pay any attention. So, you know, it was supposed to get everything back under control and, and manage it and work with the business. >>But, you know, I feel like the customers haven't made a lot of progress on that journey in the last 10 years. What's your feedback from customers? It's very true. Look, I think, uh, what you just said is also about autonomy for the developers and autonomy for that other team and such. So you can't force fit everything into single size. You know, this one size fits all kind of a philosophy. That's where there's a bell curve of adoption in any technology. I mean, even today, if you think of the hyperscalers, you know, you might think that they have it all. They have 2% of the market, you know, and that's how big this market really is. So I think going back to understanding that each of these groups actually has skill sets that are different. They're used to doing things a certain way and unless you go and weave it with them, you know what I tell people is you want to walk to where the customer is before you walk with them to where you want them to be actually. >>So walking to where the customer is not going to the private cloud. You know, we could easily have said, look, let's banish all this. Let's build everything as an off prem cloud service 10 years ago. But he said, the market is not there yet. Similarly, we said we got to build appliances because right now the white box market is not there yet for the enterprise. Then when we came out of it, we said, look, the market is already there. Let's walk with them with pure software now subscription. We did the same with the underlying marginalization software below Nutanix. We said, let's walk the world where the customers, let's run on top of VMware if that's what it takes, and then walk with them to where we want them to be, which is an invisible hypervisor and such. So I think we've got to keep doing this. You know, where, let's remove the hubris from a innovation in Silicon Valley and a lot of hubris about these things that we know it all. I think when you try to go and understand and have the entity for the customer is when magical things happening. >>That's a fantastic note to end on a dear AJ, thank you so much for coming back on the cube. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more from Nutanix dot. Next.